Improved Performance together with new Features
openSUSE Leap 15.6 for s390x has been released and is available for you!
Collaboration
Thank you to SUSE and Red Hat for the collaborative approach (via scaling on IBM's side) to achieving better performance and memory usage on Linux on Z (incl. on community distributions via upstream-first)! openSUSE Leap 15.6 will provide a better experience with faster builds and less CPU and memory usage during running applications.
Java 21
This stable release includes Java 21 based on OpenJDK, the same as on OpenJ9. The Eclipse OpenJ9 JVM provides a faster startup and is a component of the IBM Developer Kit. Feel free to compare them:
- zypper in java-21-openjdk
- zypper in java-21-openj9
Python 3.11
Python 3.11 gives you all what you need to develop for AI. Not all „IBM supported“ Python software is provided via our repositories based on missing/failing s390x tests on the IBM side for upstream. IBM recommends the usage of „pip“ to install ONNX (as an example) for the usage of AI on IBM Z.
WARNING (related to all Linux distributions on IBM Z & LinuxONE): Linux distributions can not guarantee the functionality of newly developed features related to AI and other things for z16 any more. That is based on missing/incorrect tests on IBM's side and missing z16 systems for Linux distributions for validation. Please create bug reports at IBM if you experience issues with „IBM supported“ open source software on z16, which is not included in our repositories.
gcc 12 and 13
openSUSE Leap 15.6 also delivers latest gcc compilers (gcc 12and gcc 13). There are some-m options and System Z Built-in functions included for the usage of gcc 13.
Containerization and Virtualization
Do you want to containerize on a community Linux distribution? Then, the choice between Podman, Docker and containerd includes all what you need. Users of Virtualization can use KVM 8.2.2 on top of openSUSE Leap 15.6 as our latest stable release.
Easy Migration to SLES
openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are binary compatible, and we are developing together on our stable releases. Therefore, you can choose openSUSE Leap to test what will be expected on SUSE Linux Enterprise (with support by SUSE) with the same packages. The migration from openSUSE to SLES on s390x is well-tested.
Do you experience any issues with openSUSE systems? You can receive community support. Feel free to inform us with your hints via our openSUSE Bugzilla.
Sarah Julia Kriesch
openSUSE Release Engineer for s390x
Teamlead openSUSE zSystems
(Co-)Chair of the Linux Distributions Working Group @ The Open Mainframe Project